African Union stance on the Sahara issue: incipient change

Political Developments: Towards a Political Transition? Countries in the Sahel are facing political changes that seriously affect the African continent at large. This blog attempts to give an overview of the recent political developments in the region before focusing on the ongoing challenges. Starting 2011, Libya went through the Arab Spring protest leading to the current political deadlock. The escalation of violence combined with a rising death toll forced the international com ...

Ethiopia is located at the heart of the Horn of Africa. Torn between its position within the Greater Middle East (Culcasi 2008, 128 and Fukuyama 2008, 206) from one side, and Sub Saharan Africa on the other, this East African state is landlocked in a region marked by intense and long-standing political strife and conflicts, and is directly exposed to regional insecurity and political volatility. Against this unstable background, successive regimes and governments in Addis Ababa have ...

Energy is at the core of the remarkable current transitions in the global economy and geopolitics, and natural gas plays a crucial role in these processes. In this context of rapidly evolving trends at the market level and developing dynamics between regional and global actors, The Future of Natural Gas aims at analysing the role of natural gas in the future energy mix by considering several key factors: the ambitious climate policies agreed by the international community, cost issu ...

La façade atlantique de l’Afrique réunit dans un espace géopolitique en construction les principaux atouts et défis du continent africain. La conjugaison de ces enjeux au comportement des Etats de la région semble fournir les premières composantes d’une identité stratégique « afro-atlantique », toujours en construction : vision commune des enjeux et institutionnalisation de l’espace, à travers des structures informelles comme la Conférence des États africains riverains de l’Atlantiq ...

In January 2016 the Chinese Government issued its first “China's Arab Policy Paper”, in which it stated: “We will enhance exchanges of experts and scholars from the two sides and actively explore the establishment of a long-term China-Arab exchange mechanism of think tanks.” I think that this line implies three things. First, it implies that the Chinese Government pays great attention to think tanks’ roles in China-Arab cooperation in the form of government document on the eve of Pr ...

Jointly organized by OCP Policy Center and Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, the roundtable on "Current African Economic and Strategic Challenges and Opportunities; Intersecting Views from China and Morocco" was a great opportunity to gather experts from both side, to brainstorm opportunities to enhance the role of think-tanks and civil society organization in the consolidation of the Afro-Asian cooperation more efficiently and in a more comprehensive way. The seminar ...